Beneath The Mask Of A Cheap IKEA Clock
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- čas přidán 5. 05. 2023
- It costs less than $20 - let's see what makes it tick! Well, not really tick... but hey. Enjoy!
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So, you could remove that dot-segmented defuser sheet and replace it with a clear green defuser for the retro 80's look. You could also go the whole way and use self adhesive woodgrain for the case.
You gotta love those clocks where you need the konami code to set them
Nice that this one's big enough to hold a legible cheat sheet on the back.
The UK CA mark: UK Conformity Assessed marking is a conformity mark that indicates conformity with the applicable requirements for products sold within Great Britain
one of the great "benefits" of brexit... having to go through TWO regulatory bodies to get your product shipped to europe
Ironically, UKCA marking currently serves no purpose as the UK will accept CE marking till at least the end of 2024 (and probably a lot longer unless it wants to cut itself off from vital but small production run equipment such as medical and industrial machinery). It's just another symbol of brexit waste and red tape.
And currently UKCA and CE conformity rules are essentially identical because... the UK still wants to export stuff to the EU.
Taking Back Control = Identical Standards That Cost Us More
@@ethzero Yes, but that was to be expected. Despite all the posturing, deviation from EU standards is not viable.
Mind you, there is a precedent. Some ANSI standards are just carbon copies of ISO standards with a different heading.
I think it looks better with the solid numbers rather than the dots.
To me the dots are harder to read.
I would like the dots, if the dots are larger, these are too thin.
They should’ve made a version with light diffusers
Bedroom LED clocks should be red damn it!
And dim. Maybe this is for the shop or office.
I love my blue clock and bedside flame effect light.
Also, the original red LED type runs at 1.6V instead of the 3V needed by blue LEDs with color converting phosphor .
Mine is green. I prefer it over red.
Definitely not blue, though.
Mine is orange, so it's in between red and green!
10:07 YYYYMMDD is not "European", it's ISO 8601. Universally used by engineers and programmers around the world. Even in the US. 😉
Americans call the rest of the world outside North America “European”. But yes in this case it is worldwide, that includes US.
Yes, for a lot of things YYYYMMDDHHMMSS makes a lot of sense because the text sorting order is the same as the order in time. Even doing the AM or PM on the right end comes out correct.
When I began to use spreadsheets, I always use this format. It ease date sorting, selecting time format with left zeros to allow better legibility and proper row alignment, even in file names.
It is also used in Sweden. They use YYYY-MM-YY but if there is no year then it is DD/MM.
@@kensmith5694 after ages of doing dd-MMM-yyyy I realized that yyyy-mm-dd sorts nicely...upon discovery I as a team lead issued new guidance for all meeting notes filename to be in that format (although the actual word doc headers are still spelling out day, month-name, year
Why did I die when she touched the glass right after removing the cover 😂
You need one of Big Clive’s spudgers!
Right on brother. And I can see from your symbol that you are well grounded too. Good stuff.
I wouldn't be shocked to find out that somewhere else in the store is a basket of generic power adapters. I do know that from working for a product company, providing power supplies with electronics off shore requires a lot of special versions.
YES. Hopefully a fan will send her one.
@@penfold7800 aww heck, I have a whole jar of generic spudgers in a jar at work. I could drop one in the mail tomorrow.
Every workshop needs a spider 😂
looks like the case almost needs a good lead ingot, to increase the weight for more perceived quality, plus so doesn't accidentally get knocked off the table!
Not lead but something else would be a good idea. Just a chunk of iron would be fine.
Eine Hand voll rostige Schauben und Muttern und ein paar Tropfen Superkleber hätte einen ähnlichen Effekt 😅
If you're going to put it on a table/desk/etc definitely. It also has mounting brackets on the back, though. To hang it on the wall I'd want it to be light as possible.
The display style just brings to mind Samir and Mike's reply to the Jump To Conclusions mat idea in the film Office Space.
Excellent reference 😂
The UKCA mark isn’t related to Canada, it’s just part of the UK’s new, post-Brexit product certification scheme and stands for “UK Conformity Assessed”. It’s their equivalent to our European Union CE mark or the US’s FCC one.
"UKCA" means UK Conformity Assessed. It's the Brexit CE mark replacement.
More unboxing videos need groovy beat boxing plastic peeling sessions like this.
brianellis9990, I prefer the sound that Techmoan overlays in his videos when he is peeling of protective film.
the idea of the EU standardising on micro USB (and now USB C, haha!) is that you don't end up with multiple units of the same adapter. So to follow through on that you really need to not ship an adapter and use one you already have.
"Universal" serial bus with a million different connectors how ironic.
@@LanceHall just micro usb (for most cheaper shit) and usb c (for everything else), what million connectors??
Yes, to reduce e-waste. You can buy a usb charger and cable separately in ikea if you need one
You still need to buy an adapter and the EU doesn't prevent that being included. I would have at least expected a cable to be included. The EU never standardised on micro-USB, only recommended it and that was over a decade ago. USB-C regulation attempts to prevent waste from proprietary plugs and sockets on chargers, but this product seems to breach even that future law, which might be why the stock is being quickly flogged off in the US.
@@munehaus Not sure if this is really affected by the new EU USB C regulation. It isn't rechargeable so it doesn't need any charger. And the rules differs between rechargeable devices where one power adapter can be used for many different items, and devices that needs permanent power.
Personally I’d like a red cover screen for a classic look, or if I got very moddy indeed, replace all the LEDs with UV ones and the screen with a semi-opaque UV reactive acrylic so that it selectively glows instead of lights up.
Wouldn't an amber LED hit the right color more accurately.
I believe it being imported to the UK is why it does not have a power adapter. I don't know if it's in legislature, but many products do not come with power adapters in the UK, probably in an effort to reduce e-waste.
More like reduce cost.
😮Are you genuinely surprised that it doesn’t include a transformer and cable ??!? All these cheap products now rely on the gazillion micro USB cables we keep “just in case”. Does Philadelphia exist in a time bubble from 2013?
The chip may well be a microcontroller at heart. It doesn't take much of a micro to make a clock. If you are making many clocks that are a variation on the LED clock, doing a microcontroller based thing saves you from making a lot of different chips.
Well, at least it says right on the box there's no cord included.
I kind of like the idea of power packs not coming with the devices i’ve used up for cell phones but I don’t really have a need for five chargers for my current one
I really love it, I just have soooo many adaptors and cords that I never use, it's a waste.
I'm surprised nobody has commented on the big label on the front: 'Excl. 5V Micro - USB cord'. I was not at all surprised when you opened it and found it had no cable included.
Yep, that really stood out (it's inverted and to the side) long before the box was opened. And the reason is rather simple too: People have been buying and losing phones with included cords for decades. IKEA don't want to add to the pile of orphaned chargers, but provide an opportunity to use one productively. They also offer a large variety of them, e.g. Koppla, Småhagel, Åskstorm, Lörby and Nordmärke. I have a 5-port charger near my bed to charge phone, watch, tablets (eink and leia), game console, and yes, power a clock. And of course the power cord is region specific, while the clock isn't.
Not reading labels and complaining about obviously NOT missing parts. Who has not a drawer with unused phone chargers at home? I like Ikeas approach to not piling up electronic waste. And, if you read the box IN the store and do not have a power supply and a cable, you can get one.
Here in the UK, consumer laws state that electrical devices have to come with everything needed for the device's basic operation. So a cable and power adaptor would be needed for the clock to function thus would have to be provided. Modern devices bend that law a lot by only providing the cable if they have a chargeable battery built in, providing it with a full or partial charge so it can technically be used out of the box! Very sketchy indeed.
I once bought a light hood for taking photos of objects in an evenly lit environment that was powered by a USB cable, no batteries. They did not provide the power supply so I complained to Amazon, stated the applicable law and they proceeded to refund me the full amount for the hood but allowed me to keep it! lol
kick ass that it has 24h option
🤣 The one I got from Amazon only has the 24hr mode. Glad I like it.
They would get so many returns if they sold it in the UK without a 24hr display. I remember back in the early 80s when companies tried that.
Who hasn't set a clock while too tired to remember the stupid little dot? Even pass-out sleepy I can distinguish 5 from 17, but not 5:20 from .5:20 or 5:20.
I noticed well labeled i2c contacts on the pcb. Somebody will certainly have investigated the hackable prospects by now.
i2c would be interesting, even jtag is interesting if it's easy enough to read
What hacking stuff would be worth investigating on a clock?
It either displays the time, or it doesn't display the time.
@@volvo09 maybe add functions like homeassistant intergrations idk, people have the weirdest things
@@volvo09 Hook i2c to an ESP32 and for $5 you have an NTP atomically accurate alarm clock. 🙂
@@volvo09 You can do quite a lot with some tinkering.
- get automatic time synchronisation
- automatic daylight savings
- ability to show seconds instead of day-of-week
- add a count-down timer
- add stop-watch
- more steps for the intensity
- add a light sensor and have it automatically adjust the display intensity
- different alarm times depending on day-of-week
- multiple alarms same day
- configure over WiFi or Bluetooth from phone
- add shake snooze
- add shout snooze
- ...
"It's just a watch" doesn't change the fact that the sky's the limit.
LOVE the Kraftwerk reference, Fran!
Thanks for the review, and taking it apart, I just ordered one.
Could replace the dot screen with a sheet of velum for a classic look.
would also be fun to hang the raw PCB with the LEDs as a clock that you can only read if "you know"
@6:03 oh my, you pull out plugs using the cord not the plug?!?! I thought you were technically inclined! 😊
Enough to know it makes no difference whatsoever.
If no-one has mentioned it BONDTOLVAN is made up by Bond(e) meaning Farmer and Tolvan meaning Twelve, maybe hinting something about old ages when farmers were working all day long. Maybe ...
And to use the Ford joke - you may get that clock in any colour as long as it is army green.
Bought one similar for my wife who complained she got blinded by the angry bly LEDs when she was checking the time at night. Bought a good old analog alarm clock with a little lamp (not a LED) för a few bucks.
I have never had good results stabbing at buttons rather than pressing them. Maybe they are scanned fairly slowly and don't pick up the brief switch closures, or perhaps more likely the anti-bounce algorithm rejects very brief spastic switch closures.
Bizarre to see a reference to my locality of Milton Keynes! Mind you, the address is of Ikea's head office as I've been to some pubs round there. The Ikea store in MK is more towards Bletchley.
Designing a 14-segment display to say WEOnesday surely makes sense...
Should I be surprised that this isn’t a radio clock - one that keeps its own time?
Love the Kraftwerk reference. I like the Big Clive Isopropanol trick with glue. Usually works but I wonder if that would have clouded the bezel?
Almost nice, the actual time is nice, however the day part sucks, I'd like to be able to de-select that part.
One BIG problem, is accuracy, In the past pretty much all mains powered clocks used the 50/60Hz AC mains as a reference, and as such kept really good time, However these newer 5V USB powered devices have no access to that and will slowly drift off. I have one and it is a pain. They have saved a few dollars by not having to include the mains transformer power supply of days past, but in doing so have saddled us with crappy clocks that need frequent attention to keep them on-time.
Even many newer clocks that include the supply, use a switch mode power brick that does not pass on the 50/60Hz reference - so whilst complete, cannot accurately tell the time.
I thought they sold the adapters separately in Europe because of e-waste?
I saw that there are power pins and I2C pins on the PCB. It seems that a hack such as installing a GPS module may be possible. However, since most MCUs are installed with the firmware locked, it will not be possible to use them in their original state.
Cut out the MCU and add a $5 ESP32. That 'll give you NTP time via wifi.
Those IKEA LED's show up in like every lamp and light related product they sell and honestly they are great. I can easily desolder them, theres never a shortage of ikea stuff to scavange off the street, and they are amazingly versatile for all sorts of maker projects where you coudn't possibly hope to squeeze an LED in otherwise. I don't know what sort of PCB fab startup earned a contract with them to do all their OEM, but it was a great fing deal for everyone.
UKCA is nothing to do with Canada, it stands for UK Conformity Assessment after leaving the EU it fulfills the same role as the "CE" mark (which is recognised in parallel for the next couple of years).
...and most likely forever, since deviating from EU standards makes absolutely zero business sense.
I still have my red LED one from 1984.
Hi I have a question, does the watch keeps the light on all time or it shuts off
Great! Can we have some more 'How to smash up things' videos please Fran?
Smash a printer?🤔😅✌️
I didn't see her SMASH💥💪
Anything... What Video did
YOU Watch?? 😮🤡🎱🤬👁️😾
I bet Bill Murray would have been in there in a flash, dead on the the stroke of 06:00!
"Put on your booties, coz it's cold out there"!!
As you mentioned, your having to provide the DC supply means that IKEA doesn't have to handle the logistics of all the different wonky power plugs used in the World.
Also, not supplying an AC adapter limits the manufacturer's liability and facilitates CE compliance. It also places the liability on the manufacturer of the AC/DC adapter that you must purchase.
Also most homes have dozens of chargers floating around. Or 5V options built into other stuff.
That UKCA is UK Conformity Assessment.. Says this Canadian who had to look it up 😁👍
The dots definitely make it worse. I'd just put a plain piece of tinted plastic over it.
IKEA hace always porported to be an environmental pead company. Some years ago EU law makers noted that countless *functional* mobile phone adapters where being sent to landfill simply because the phone no longer worked and had a proprietary charging adaptor.
The EU passed a law to standardise on USB so the theory os that if you have eventually gain a spare USB micro adapter, you can reuse it for new consumer products such as this clock.
Last week I bought one like this guy, as I collect IKEA clocks. As mysteriously showed at the store without any power, I got to know myself. LOL.
Happily I own a lot of MicroUSB cables around. It must have the cable included with the proper length to use. There are even AC power strips with USB connectors. Also It could be better to have the digits with more a bit separation for visibility and with some auto brightness control. It is so cluttered.
Thank you so much for this video! Was watching this clock which I bought about a year ago already forquite a I while......Useless in the corner as apparently it needs to be plugged in all the time. I love mddoing so now I gonn make it also work without the usb cable and add a usb charging regulater in it + 3 repurposed e-sig batteries in paralel + a little 5 volt Solar panel. My hopes are high :)
Hi Fran is there an auto panner on your voice? I noticed that the right channel seems to go back and forth a little bit as you speak this doesn't happen and anybody else's videos. I only notice it with headphones on
I wanted to know how to take mine apart so I could disable the speaker, so thank you for this 🙏
It still stuns me when I see a package opened to reveal the product there right up against the packaging, with no apparent protection from getting knocked around in shipment. It seems like a trend Apple started that everyone now copies. It's good that less packaging equals less waste, but I would imagine the number of units defective upon delivery is greater.
The case appears to be designed to accommodate a battery-operated version, as it seems to be twice the depth it needs to be to contain the necessary components. I also agree with your sentiment that the "dots" diffuser diminishes the clock. A diffusion filter + color gel would greatly improve the appearance of the display over the provided "lens."
Many/most AC addaptors these days are Switching PS that accept "universal"(100-240AC) input voltage. Only the AC outlet plug style differs per the region of use. Whats that DC Input connector type; Mini or Micro USB? Does it have a 12/24 hr format option?
i live about hour away from Milton Keynes in the uk it has a place called Bletchley park which played an integral part during ww2 it homes the Enigma decoding machine as used by the military ,...
I would hazard a guess that the black parts of the front lens also contribute to the high contrast ratio, by masking off everything else.
Not sure why Ikea went with dots, rather than solid bars.
The white PCB looks nice. BTW, your audio was kind of wobbling between right and left, not sure if it's just how the mic you use picks the audio. It wasn't too terrible, but oddly enough it made me feel a just a tiny bit dizzy. Which is kind of interesting, as I'm a very visual person, but still don't easily get dizzy from any visual stimulus.
I hope you brought it back to IKEA afterwards "Hey, this one is scratched."
The fine dots for the display are kind of nice in a dark room, by your bedside. Keeps the light emitted and distraction down a bit imho.
I had one like that, the clocks not bad. Its just that every time it rings, is always set to lowest volume.
Looks like there is an I2C bus on that board. The give away are the test points SDA and SCL. I wonder what it's for.
When i was an automotive EE we called the white part a lightbox.
3:15 UKCA have nothing to do with Canada, it mean *UK Conformity Assessed*.
There's an NIUK as well for Northern Ireland.
It's a Post-Brexit new thing. I mean, they can't use the CE European Certification anymore.
It's just another reminder that we are in a global trade system and we have the echoes of the Brexit.
Hello could you please tell me where you got the plug from ?
I’m kind of okay with things not coming with power adapters now that everything is usb and even power strips are starting to include usb ports , but they could at least include a cable.
Hi.
Maybe You could place a lens in front and make it into projection clock?
Fahr'n, fahr'n, fahr'n auf der Bondtolvan. I luv your German singing 😄. Original tune from Kraftwerk in 1974, and its called 'Fa........ auf der Autobahn'.
Ha that's my local IKEA. I'm in Milton Keynes
Wonder how it would look with some very smoked perplex in front of it? Would love el gigante segments instead of that modernized dot nonsense.
Yeah, the front segment is the most customizable. You could make it look like an older LED 7 segment display.
When I was a kid my alarm clock had the yellow green display.
I believe you meant *Perspex*❤😮😊
@@wilneal8015 Indeed! :D
Bondtolvan is the card game Mariage in Swedish.
Is the power supply linear DC or an RF noise maker switcher?
No battery backup?
Like mobiles, everyone has a usb adapter and the company doesn't have to make different voltages for different countries.
I thought people talk BS again but in the IKEA clock video I also notice it now. I think it's audio compression. Some codecs might not like to deal with the same signal on both channels. AFAIK YT forces stereo, so it copies the single channel to both sides and then encodes it as a stereo stream. And maybe the compression codec does get confused sometimes depending on the content.
Ah yes ISO-8601, the only sensible date format. YYYY-MM-DD.
Does it have the alarm for tea time?
The hourly chime option? 🙂
A lot of space inside, you can put custom powerbank inside. I wonder what is the power consumption on full brightness…
the kraftwerk is amazing
If they sold it like that in the UK they'd have a massive returns rate, we wouldn't stand for no power adaptor or cable!!
tolvan would be like “the twelve,” and i wonder if the bond part is to do with farmers? also when i put “bondtolvan” in google translate it spits out “the peasant twelve.” i’ve been more or less fluent in swedish for over a decade and i could tell you what most IKEA product names are in english, but not this one apparently!
also ikea sells their own usb-cables and wall warts at a pretty decent price, so they probably keep it out because they want you to buy it separately but from them
Bondtolvan is the name of both a card game and a skip rope game, it seems.
In the card game, the one that first get 12 points win. That would explain "tolvan" (the twelve). I don't know if it's something similar in the skip rope game.
What the meaning of the farmer (bond(e)) part is, I don't know and haven't been able to find out.
Interesting they have pads for i2C on the board.
In the UK and Europe electronic device that use USB connectors for power are no longer allowed to come with adaptor and cable supplied
That is not true.
I'll keep my Timex thankyou. 🤪
how to increase alarm sound ??
Milton Keynes in the UK, they have cows made of concrete.
I love the Kraftwerk reference!!! 😝
cuz everyone has a phone charger/adapter, and the clock was super cheap. so....
Thanks
Would be interesting to see if one could convert it into an NTP clock with an ESP.
Well, you could get the time via NTP, power-cycle the clock by a small mosfet and then "twiddle the knobs" with the ESP to set the clock.
@@tomteiter7192 I think one would need to build a driver to drive those specific LEDs, which appear to be a segment (via the diffuser), per LED.
@@MicheIIePucca No, the idea is to let the ESP act like a human would press the buttons. Like a remote control. And leave the clock circuit itself unmodified.
For example:
Set the time to, say, Wednesday 14:02
- power cycle
- press SET for 2.5 seconds (one might even check if some segment in the hours display is now blinking)
- press "-" to set 24h
- press SET
- press "+" fourteen times
- press set
- press "+" two times
- press SET
- press "+" two times to set WED
- done.
When the clock's control chip reacts fast enough this could be done almost invisibly.
10:17
I'm from Europe and where I live we write 07-01-2022 for the 7th of January.
I got a much better clock from Asda (owned by Walmart). Aside from being an alarm clock, it's a wireless phone charger and a Bluetooth stereo speaker. Also Less than £20.
I honestly thought that screen had cracked and was thinking some heat and a suction pad.
Is it USB? There's been a massive push lately to stop including cords or power supplies with new products that use USB for power claiming environmental reasons although it sure seems like it's functionally to make you spend more money on a separate purchase...
everyone copies apple, even when it's a change just to cut down a few cents like not adding a cable and charger, but this is IKEA, so I guess everyone is used to buying things in individual pieces
If there was ever a day to read the field Manual
Adapter with every phone/device causes e-waste. That is why EU has legislated that USB-C plug to be used for powering small devices, and that devices should be supplied without an adapter.
Just tell me the specs. I'm sure I have an adapter around already! 😂 And though I've built computers from the motherboard I still can't figure out how to open battery compartments. 😢
No adapter is supplied because most likely everyone has plenty of those laying around at home.
And if you don’t happen to have one, they’re sold very cheaply at IKEA.
Do they? I always find I have more phones than chargers. Yes I can easily "borrow" one from another device, but a clock needs constant power.
@@munehaus So then you’ll need to buy one. Why supply a charger to every single person when not every single person needs one. That doesn’t make much sense.
I noticed during the teardown no presence of a backup battery or a supercapacitor, this means that in the event of a loss of power supply the time is lost and if an alarm is set it will most likely never go off. I have a Sony radio clock and it has a small button cell battery to keep the clock running even in the event of a power loss.
@@CT-vm4gf I think if I buy a clock I expect to be able to plug it in. It's the same reason batteries and plugs are usually included with products these days. If I didn't need the whole clock I could buy a kit.
A small internal lipo battery would've been nice considering the purpose, and all the empty space in the case. Nothing worse than a clock that's annoying to set and loses its setting when the power fails. But IKEA isn't stupid, adding a flammable lithium battery probably would have massively increased their overseas shipping costs. It would be an easy DIY hack to add into the case considering the USB port is already on its own breakout board.
Everybody loves army green it's so retro isn't it?
UKCA logo has nothing to do with Canada. It stands for 'UK Conformity Assessed'